Blood donor recipient, Esther-Grace Pekepo talks about her experience fighting lymphoma.
Esther-Grace Pekepo, 22, wouldn't be here today if it were not for the generosity of strangers.
In 2011, when she was still a year 12 student, she noticed a lump on the right side of her chest. She didn't think much of it until it started hurting. It gradually grew to half the size of a tennis ball.
Her doctor put her on antibiotics and ran blood tests which all came back normal.
Despite the antibiotics, she didn't feel like she was getting better and more lumps were appearing - each of them tender to the touch.
"It really hurt. It really restricted a lot of my movement and motion," she said. "My friends were too afraid to hug me because even a soft hug was too much. I love hugs, so that was pretty hard."
Near the end of 2011 Pekepo was sent to the hospital. A biopsy revealed she had a rare form of blood cancer - subcutaneous panniculitis-like T-cell lymphoma.
It looked like an inflammatory disorder called panniculitis, which produces painful bumps under the skin but was much worse because it was a cancer so kept on spreading.
Pekepo was initially prescribed oral chemotherapy but the lumps kept popping up. In 2013 she was started on intravenous chemotherapy.
During the year she faced countless trips to the hospital and received a "ridiculous amount" of transfusions of blood and plasma as doctors tried three different types of chemotherapy. Each appeared successful at first but the lumps would come back the end of the treatment.
Pekepo received more than 40 units of red blood cells, more than 20 platelet transfusions and doses of three other products made from donated blood during her treatment. Without those, chances are she would not be here today.
Esther-Grace Pekepo relied on blood donors to survive while she was fighting lymphoma. Photo/Dean Purcell
Doctors told her she had one last treatment option - a bone marrow transplant.
It didn't take long to find a match and on December 12, 2014 she received the transplant. "That's my other birthday," she said.
She was discharged from hospital a couple of months later and has been in the clear ever since.
Pekepo had given blood twice at high school but didn't think much of it until she was on the receiving end - now she wants others to realise how important it is.
"You save so many lives by doing something that takes 10 minutes," she said. "You have the opportunity to gift people life. How amazing is that? It's such a priceless gift.
"You don't have to be a doctor to save a life."
Across New Zealand there are already 110,000 "secret lifesavers" walking among us who save or help almost 29,000 people every year.
Today is World Blood Donor Day and New Zealand Blood Service national marketing and communications manager Asuka Burge said the organisation was grateful for those who already gave blood but said more were needed.
"The impact that such an unassuming act can have on people's lives is monumental."
The New Zealand Blood Service needed to collect more than 168,000 units of blood a year to meet demand - more than 3000 donations every week, she said.
"It only takes about an hour out of your day to make a blood donation, but every donation made has the potential to save three lives," she said.
More than 10,000 new donors signed up between the New Zealand Herald's Missing Types campaign in August last year and early January this year.
